Easter

Amazingly, David was able to get the entire weekend off of work, so we made a quick trip to Indy to celebrate Easter with our families.  We spent Saturday at my grandmother's house, Eliana's G.G., and then Sunday at David's parents house.

G.G. found a baby turtle in her front yard that she saved for Eliana to see.  After this, we let the turtle go in the pond behind her house.  Eliana was only mildly interested in it.

Eliana playing with Grandpa, sitting on the picnic table that he built for her!  So cute to watch them interact.

Hanging out with Uncle Mike.

My family's Easter picture.

And now just the three of us.

Sunday morning before we headed over to David's parent's house, my mom had a little Easter egg hunt.

That's right, it was a hunt for all the big kids too.  My mom puts money and lotto tickets inside the eggs to encourage participation from even the most reluctant hunter.

Hunting with Grandma.

Sweetie

Checking out her piece of candy.  After putting it in her mouth, Eliana spit it out, then picked the chocolate off the ground, put it back in her mouth again, and spit it out again.  Then she asked me to help her get the dirt off of her tongue.  That's why the rest of the candy we switched out for goldfish.  Happy Easter!

Adele's 2nd Birthday

 Eliana's good friend Adele just celebrated her second birthday.  As part of the party, her parents had Mr. Eric (a kid's music man) come and sing some sing-a-long songs with the kids.  He had some instruments available and a couple of microphones set up for kiddie karaoke.  While most of the children enjoyed playing the instruments, few were brave enough to try out the mics.  After singing lots of songs in my lap, I finally convinced Eliana to go up to the microphone and sing.  She was awesome!  Eliana loves to sing and knew most of the words to every song (Wheels on the Bus, Itsy Bitsy Spider, etc).  The song that finally pulled her to go up was "You are My Sunshine," one of her favorites.  Once up front, Eliana stayed as the center of attention the whole time.  She's our little diva!  Adele is such a great friend to Eliana and we had a really great time at her party. 

Hanging with the birthday girl on the right wearing their party favors, sunglasses!

Happy 2nd Birthday Adele!

COSI

A really fun place to take your kids in Columbus, OH is COSI, the children's museum downtown.  We just purchased a family membership to the museum and within a week had already been twice!  Almost all of the moms in my Mom's Group have a membership, so I bet we will really get a lot of use out of that card.  Eliana loves the little kids area that is basically an indoor play place.  They have slides and cars plus a farm area, farmer's market, house, and construction area.  It has baby dolls and a kitchen which are pretty much Eliana's favorite things.  Besides the play area, there are several rotating exhibits throughout the museum.  Right now they have one on the Ocean that Eliana also really likes.  It involves lots of water and splashing so she always ends of really wet.  Some of the exhibits are a little over Eliana's head, but she finds plenty of things to explore. 

Riding in the wagon with Theo.

Driving the ambulance.  They have a hospital/clinic theme that involves a lot of bandaids, the remedy to all ailments.

In the farm area.  Eliana is feeding the chicken an egg.  I guess they are cannibalistic chickens.

She is gathering up the eggs.

And feeding the eggs to the chicken again.

Riding a car.

Trip number two with Daddy.  Eliana and David played in the clinic area.  Eliana knew just what to do with the stethoscope.

Fixing up her baby.

By the way, do you happen to remember this picture from when Eliana was a baby?  It's in the genes.

Giant Box Fun plus a lesson from a first time parent.

Recently our hot water heater went out and had to be replaced.  When the plumber finished installing the new heater, he asked me if I wanted him to break down the box it came in and haul it out to the garbage.  Seeing the great potential in this giant box, I of course said no way!  Eliana thought the box was pretty neat.  The plumber cut it open in such a way that it basically had a door to get inside almost like a little house or a phone booth.  Eliana's top game to play with it was hide and seek.  Usually when we play this game, Eliana asks me to count and then goes and hides, almost always in the same spot over and over again.  True to form, Eliana wanted to play hide and seek with the box.  She would have me count in the living room then run and hide in the box ... every single time.  I would count to ten then come in the kitchen and act like I couldn't find her.  The whole time she would be giggling inside the box.  If I asked a question out loud like "Is Eliana under the table?", usually she would respond "No," and then giggle.  What an unexpected present our plumber brought us!

Another activity we did with the box was painting.  It made for a great big canvas, so I just threw a tarp under the whole box and let Eliana start painting away wherever she wanted.  Eliana was wearing her painting shirt, so it didn't matter if she got messy.  However, she was pretty wild with her paint brush and got some on my shirt.  David asked, "Is this paint washable?"  Having purchased the bottle of paint because it was super cheap, I didn't actually know.  So I quickly checked the bottle and discovered that it "cleaned with soap and water" aka, not very washable.  (It also means after you do wash your kid with soap and water, it is really really hard to get the blue paint out of the tub).  First time mom mistake.  Always check the bottle before purchasing to make sure the paint (or markers, etc) are washable!  Because I guarantee that your toddler is not going to only paint what you deam ok. 

After painting the box for a while, Eliana wanted to paint some of her rocks too.

Cutie!

Girly

A few weekends ago, my sister Abby was in town for work.  Ok, technically she was in Findlay, OH, but that is just a short drive to Columbus, so she came to visit for the weekend.  And if my sister is in town, you can bet that my parents are not far behind.  So on that Saturday, we hung out with my parents, brother and sister-in-law, and Abby.  It was great getting to spend some time with family, including the girls (sans Eliana), going to get our nails done as a special treat while Grandpa and Uncle Michael hung out with Eliana and David cooked dinner.

Eliana is really becoming a girly girl.  She likes to play dress up and wear high heel shoes (especially mine).  I have a jewelry box for Eliana that has play items and old jewelry from my Grandma Retzner.  Eliana loves to play with it!

This is how we started out the morning: Eliana in nothing but a diaper and wearing a backpack with her bear in it. 

Eliana also likes to play with the camera and take pictures.  She took this one of David, which was really good!

Wearing all of her jewels.

Grandma Retzner's clip on earrings.

Hanging out with Grandma, showing off her toes.  After Eliana saw my toes painted, she really wanted to have hers done too.  So I painted her toes, one foot pink and the other purple.  She was pretty excited about that.